Tom Kludt

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Tom Kludt is a reporter for Talking Points Memo based in New York City, covering media and national affairs. Originally from South Dakota, Tom joined TPM as an intern in late-2011 and became a staff member during the 2012 election. He can be reached at tom@talkingpointsmemo.com.

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Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on Wednesday dismissed Time magazine's selection of President Barack Obama as its person of the year for 2012, arguing that the news weekly is no longer relevant. Appearing on Fox News, Palin backed up her argument by citing the magazine's previous selection of her on its annual list of the most influential people in the world.

“Time magazine, you know, I think there is some irrelevancy there, to tell you the truth,” Palin told Fox's Greta Van Susteren. “I mean consider their list of the most influential people in the country and the world, some who have made that list — yours truly! that ought to tell you something right there regarding the credence that we should give Time magazine and their list of people.”

A report from the Sri Lankan government on Thursday said that 25 people are dead and 14 more are missing from flooding and mudslides caused by three days of driving rain throughout the country, the Associated Press reports.

A slight majority of the American public believes the policies advocated by the Republican Party are too extreme, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Thursday.

The 53 percent of adults who said the GOP's policies are too extreme dwarfs the 37 percent who view the Democratic Party the same way. Fifty-three percent also believe that Republicans should be the side to compromise more in fiscal cliff negotiations, compared with 41 percent who believe that Democrats should concede on more of the positions they support.

The poll was conducted Dec. 17-18 using live phone interviews with 620 American adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

The millions of dollars President Barack Obama's re-election team spent on ads tailored for mobile devices paid off, campaign operatives told AdWeek in a story published Tuesday:

In the case of mobile video ads, the Democratic operatives said they got click-through rates from 3 percent to 19.5 percent during the race's crucial stretch run when Mitt Romney appeared to surge in late October and early November. The promos criticized the GOP candidate's tax plan and praised Obama's auto industry bailout, among other examples.

"We knew we had to be in mobile," said Shannon Lee, the campaign's digital lead who previously worked at interactive shop Digitas. "The work we did there was exciting because we felt it was directly impacting the election."

Half of the country is dissatisfied with the Obama administration's handling of the September attack in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead, but a solid majority rejects the notion that the White House misled the American public on what transpired, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Wednesday.

On the heels of a scathing report released Tuesday by an independent panel that highlighted a litany of failures on the part of the State Department in the lead-up to the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the poll shows that 50 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the administrationhave handled the matter. Forty-three percent are satisfied.

But 56 percent of respondents said they do not believe the White House has "intentionally misled" the public about the attack, compared with 40 percent who believe it has.

CNN's Piers Morgan on Tuesday unloaded on a pro-gun advocate during an extremely contentious interview on his show.

During the interview, Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, contended that adding more guns in society and arming teachers could help prevent mass shootings like the one last week in Newtown, Conn., arguing that attempts to institute stricter gun control laws in European countries have failed.

That set off Morgan, who proceeded to compare gun-related deaths in America to other industrialized countries. When Pratt attempted to counter Morgan's statistics, the host fired back with an insult.

“You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?” Morgan said.

“It seems to me that you are morally obtuse,” Pratt responded. “You seem to prefer being a victim to being able to prevail over the criminal element. I don’t know why you want to be the criminal’s friend.”

Police in Scottsdale, Ariz. surrounded a local middle school Wednesday morning after a food-service worker reported seeing an armed person there around 6 a.m., Phoenix-based KTVK reports. The worker reported seeing a man dressed in a long coat with a holstered weapon. Police had covered 75 percent of the school's grounds by 9 a.m. and found nothing suspicious.

A Virginia legislator says he will introduce a bill mandating teachers or other school personnel to carry concealed weapons, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The proposal from state Sen. Robert G. Marshall (R) comes in response to last week's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Wenzel J. Cummings, the state lawyer charged with drafting the legislation, originally questioned whether the legislature has the authority to require teachers to carry weapons to school rather than authorizing them do so.

From WaPo:

Cummings, in consultation with other lawyers, ultimately concluded that the bill could be proposed as a mandate after turning up a recent example of the General Assembly’s ordering schools to do something. Last session, it passed a bill requiring that school boards adopt policies for stocking and administering epinephrine, to be administered to students in the case of a severe allergic reaction.

“Given that this is a mandate placed on the school board with regard to the training of its personnel, it seems to be within the realm of what your bill request would seek to accomplish requiring the training of personnel who would carry a firearm,” Cummings wrote. “In that vein, if you would prefer a ‘shall’ versus a ‘may,’ we think you could probably go forward with a ‘shall’ bill.”

An automated-pollster aligned with the Republican Party will launch this week in an effort to occupy a space in the data collection arena currently dominated by Democratic outfits such as Public Policy Polling, Politico reported Wednesday.

Harper Polling will officially begin its operations this week, with founder Brock McCleary telling Politico that his outfit will attempt to compete with the likes of PPP. Thanks to interactive voice response technology -- a methodology widely known as "robo-polling" that uses automated messages rather than live interviewers to conduct surveys --- PPP has established a reputation for its prolific output, churning out hundreds of polls each election cycle covering a vast array of candidates, issues and races.

“The technology is very affordable and very nimble. Having fast, precise polling was very useful for us,” McCleary, the outgoing polling director and deputy executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Politico. “This is what PPP is and there’s really no competitor.”

Tom Jensen, director of PPP, responded to the Politico report via Twitter on Wednesday, suggesting that Harper's formation is a sign both of PPP's strong track record and the dubious results produced by Rasmussen, the best-known GOP robo-pollster.